Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement

by Tarana Burke

I wrote out the story of Heaven. I wrote about how carrying my own shame had kept me from stepping out into the world to be who I was meant to be. And then I wrote about the celebrities who I knew the girls looked up to and whose stories of survival inspired me over the years, like Mary J. Blige, Fantasia, Queen Latifah, Gabrielle Union, Oprah, and of course, Maya Angelou. I wrote down a list of words that I wished someone had explained to me when I was their age. I defined things like grooming, rape, incest, disclosure, and shame. When I looked up it was dark outside. I had been writing—longhand—for hours. I felt good about what I had put down on paper, but it still felt incomplete. Parts of my own experience were embedded in what I was creating, but I knew I needed to share my actual story, something I never ever did. I didn’t even know where to start. I put down my notepad and sat on the edge of my mattress with my legs folded over one another and my back curved in a deep C. I hung my head and said a quiet prayer, asking God to intervene and lend me support. And then I did the unthinkable. I remembered. All of it. On purpose.